


soleil de ma vie

by smokesque



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Post-Canon, mentions of past trauma, more of a jean character study than anything tbh but oh well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 23:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12242922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokesque/pseuds/smokesque
Summary: Once Jean relearns how to breathe day by day, he thinks he can live with this.(or;the trojans teach jean many things, but mostly they teach him the meaning of family.)





	soleil de ma vie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caramelle kisses (carmelle)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmelle/gifts).



> this one is for my fave because it’s her birthday today and who doesn’t deserve soft jean moreau learning to love himself (and his bf) on their birthday? happy birthday groya i love u with my whol heart.
> 
> p.s. i broke my hand last week and honestly you should have seen me painstakingly type out this entire fic one-handed with support from my left thumb (it was torture. hopefully worth it though)
> 
> title lifted from the [k-reen & lesnah song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57woF3Zkk6g) of the same name because you can’t convince me jean doesn’t call jeremy at least some variation of that as a pet name

Jean is made of iron and stone. A wall of metal; to protect, to defend. He doesn’t fold and he doesn’t cave. Jean is built a champion, carved from the ashes of a weaker man.

The tattoo above his left cheekbone, stark against his pale skin, is reminder enough of this. Of who he belongs to, of where he was forged under burning blade and iron fist. Some days, he thinks he would take a knife to his skin if he could and cut the ink right out with his own hands, but the Moriyama’s are snakes in more ways than one and venom already lives in the tips of Jean’s fingers and the depths of his soul. There is little to be gained from dwelling on things so intricately ingrained in the essence of his being.

Most days, Jean tells himself he can live with it.

\---

Jeremy Knox – USC Trojans captain, striker, and resident team morale booster – does not have a tactful bone in his body. Jean learns this pretty early on in their messy would-be-friendship (if Jean were allowed friends). The first time they meet, Jean is tucked away like a secret in an unfamiliar bed and Jeremy is all concerned hums and calculating frowns. The second, Jean is well enough to stand and – by extension apparently – well enough to play a dangerously personal twenty questions with his new therapist-away-from-therapy-clinic. Jeremy bounces on the balls of his feet, grins like Jean might be Christmas and his birthday all in one, and fires off rounds of questions without blinking.

 _What’s Edgar Allan_ really _like inside? Can you teach us Raven drills? Is there_ any _colour on EAU campus?_ And the ever-favoured _Trojans versus Ravens? Trojans versus Ravens? Trojans versus Ravens?_

Jean doesn't say that he wouldn't be here if he thought he could survive another night in the Ravens' nest. It doesn’t take long for Jeremy to realise Jean’s stony silence isn’t slipping any time soon, but it does nothing to deter him from keeping the conversation going with a steady stream of comments and questions, cutting himself off before he can finish half of them to follow a new breadcrumb trail of thought. Jean, though he prides himself on his stamina and unwavering speed, struggles to keep up with this new kind of race.

Returning to his empty dorm room is little sanctity when he still can’t take in his surroundings without swallowing bile against an overwhelming sense of apprehension. He dims the lights fully but a sliver of sun creeps through the gap where the curtain rests a breath from the window frame and reverberates strangely off the stark white walls. He takes to sitting cross-legged on his bed with the blanket draped over his head, breathing in darkness like lifeblood. After an eternity of thriving on blackened oxygen, Jean isn’t sure how else to keep himself alive.

\---

Jean doesn’t have a roommate. It doesn’t dawn on him until he has no one to walk to practice, no one to trail across campus with, no one to stick to like glue. The Trojans don’t operate like that, but when Jean thinks too hard he can’t remember how to place one foot in front of the other without another’s easy pace to fall into.

He loses his breath tucked into the space where his bed doesn’t quite meet the wall, coherence shattering in shards of one-way glass that Jean is suddenly on the wrong side of. Jeremy takes to walking him to class after that.

\---

A lot of things about USC just make sense. Jean’s Business and Accounting lecture hall is in the same building as his Marketing course. The dining halls are a collective feature in the centre of the campus, accessible from any angle. Students are allowed to move freely when and where they like, to exist as their own entities, to be unapologetically alive. Jean understands all these things in theory. He can see the careful logic in the layout of the college, in the lax rules keeping students within their constraints without suffocating them. In another life, Jean might even have appreciated everything about USC that works with seamless ease.

In this life, Jean just feels out of place.

His teammates are quick to catch on to his co-dependency, and it becomes habit for him to hide himself in their shadows; for Alvarez to catch his elbow on the brisk walk to his literature class; for Laila to wave him out in the crowded dining hall when their lunch breaks line up; and for Jeremy to swing by his dorm on the way to practice. It gives Jean routine – steadying and constant in everything he does. The transition is still violent and shattering enough to leave Jean wracking his lungs for breaths he can’t remember how to take, but the Trojans are teaching him adaptation in all the ways he is teaching them fancy footwork and scrimmage drills. It’s them here with him that keeps his feet on the ground.

And more often than not it’s Jeremy. Jeremy taking him on walks across campus to get him out of his own head. Jeremy insisting he put up pictures on his bare dormitory walls to give the place some life and, upon hearing Jean doesn’t _have_ pictures, Jeremy going out of his way to take and develop a thousand and one pictures of their new line-up for Jean’s empty walls. Jeremy finding Jean folded into the smallest crevice he can find, hands cupping his ears, nails digging through his hair, eyes widened in terror at images only he can make out. Jeremy talking him down from panic attack after panic attack, voice soothing, eyes soft, and hands to himself as if he knows instinctively Jean would unravel and fall apart under physical contact.

And once Jean relearns how to breathe day by day, he thinks he can live with this. Most days, anyway.

\---

Riko is dead.

This is not news.

Jean is still shocked when he reminds himself of this each morning.

\---

Jeremy Knox has something like sunshine in his eyes. Jean is more and more sure of this every day. Jeremy Knox might be the closest thing to a star this planet has ever seen up close, and he sees something in Jean that the Ravens long since tried to douse in venom. Jean isn’t sure quite what it is yet, but it keeps Jeremy within his gravitational orbit – not close enough to touch but not yet far enough to lose sight of. Something akin to _hope_ blossoms in his chest and, for the first time, Jean begins to wonder if snakebites can heal themselves over after all.

Of course, it all comes crashing down like clockwork, repeatedly and without fail.

Midnight hits the campus in a wave of shadows, dousing the life from the once sunny skies and taking the very oxygen from the air with it. And Jean, who once thought he would never learn how to breathe in light, suffocates on the darkness. He knows what midnight means to angry men, to unforgiveable mistakes, to young boys who never learned the meaning of no. It’s habit more than anything that has him curling under his bed, lips clamped against breaths he can’t figure out how to take. This act of defiance will have consequences, he’s sure.

But somewhere Jean remembers the warmth of sunshine, of welcome grins, and gentle words, and a boy who bounces on the balls of his feet. His fingers are tapping out the message before he has time to think of it, desperate as they are to claw their way back into sunlight. _Bad_ it says, flashing on his screen above a timestamp, before he shoves the phone away from him. The darkness squeezes a little tighter. Jean barely supresses a whimper.

And like that, rays of sunshine seek him out. Jeremy turns all the lights on when he lets himself into the room, casting aside the ever-present nightmares with one fell swoop as he enters. It doesn’t take him long to find Jean’s tired and broken body, shaking under the weight of things he’ll never know how to describe. Jeremy crawls in next to him, curls himself up into a perfect mirror image, and lets his warm breath fan over Jean’s face. He doesn’t reach out, which Jean is thankful for because he knows any touch right now would feel like a knife to his throat, but he talks – stories Jean will never grow tired of hearing filling the pressing silence and lighting the room far more effectively than the flickering bulb in the ceiling. Jean remembers how to breathe, remembers how to unwind his limbs where they are wrapped around themselves, remembers that Riko is gone and Jean is untouchable.

He shifts before he has time to realise what he’s doing, his arm creeping forward until the back of his hand lies flat against the ground, fingers aligned with Jeremy and the briefest brush of their pinkies. Jeremy doesn’t flinch, surging on through his story, and Jean lets the stiffness ebb out of his body, lets his pinkie channel warmth to the rest of his limbs. And it isn’t an instant fix to a lifetime of breaking, but maybe it is enough.

\---

The most powerful thing the Trojans teach Jean is how to fight. He has spent his whole life submitting to whatever is asked of him, because it’s the only way to survive as a Raven, but the Trojans teach him defiance and strength and spirit. Jean has been made a champion, broken in time and again to build him into an unstoppable force. But somewhere along the way, he learns that being a champion doesn’t always mean being good enough alone. Sometimes it means depending and trusting and going down fighting because it’s the only thing you know how to do. Sometimes it means family.

\---

 _A year does a lot for a person_ , Jean thinks, when twelve months sees him cross-legged in his dorm room bed, curtains open, lights on, and a head cradled in his lap. Jeremy snuffles slightly in his sleep, his grip tightening then slackening over the hem of Jean’s hoodie. Jean pushes his hair back from his forehead briefly, watches the way Jeremy’s chin tilts at the movement, and returns to tracing light circles into his scalp.

There are nearly two hundred pictures tacked to the wall at Jean’s back, mostly of the Trojans in practice gear or huddled into group shots from days out together, but there are several of the Foxes too from Renee’s constant stream of updates, even one of Kevin and Jean animatedly discussing tactics after a match. Jeremy took Jean out shopping for a rug to cover his bare floor and several cushions in bright shades of rainbow. Streaks of red and gold have crept their way into his wardrobe too, and fairy lights dangle in any unused space of his room, giving him enough light to sleep by.

Jean watches the way the sun streams through the open curtains, turning Jeremy’s hair golden beneath his fingertips. He knows in this moment more than ever that this is where he is meant to be. That for all the hiding and the hurt and the venom flowing his veins, this is worth a thousand times more. That now and forever, he has a home and a family.

“ _Soleil de ma vie_ ,” he whispers, lips just barely curling into the crescent moon of a smile, “Jeremy Knox, _tu signifies_ _tout pour_ _moi_.”

\---

Jean is made of skin and bones. A wall of flesh; to protect, to defend. He folds and he caves (but it’s alright). Jean is born a human, in every sense of the word, but he makes himself a champion with his family at his back.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm over on tumblr @ [niickyhemmick](https://niickyhemmick.tumblr.com/). drop by if you want to come cry with me


End file.
